Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Progress

I am back home in Illinois after an eventful week at the farm. If you read the previous post, you know about the tornado that burst it's way through our quiet countryside Tuesday night. And if you are a long-time follower, you know about my post traumatic stress disorder from the accident. What does that have to do with the tornado? I am in high gear again. Say "boo" I jump. Loud noise...scared to death. When I was little, I had reoccurring dreams about tornadoes. I am not a huge fan of storms as an adult but have learned not to fear every little storm that comes around. I think I have to start over again. Every time I close my eyes at night, I feel the fear I felt Tuesday night. I hear the tornado. I remember running as fast as I could with the cat in my arms to the basement, not knowing how I made it there so fast without tripping down the stairs. The pressure against the barn as I sat in the basement shaking & dialing the cell phone. The worry of what happened to my neighbors. I know it will eventually fade as time goes by, but for now, ugh, I need to relax.
I talked to Lizzie & Eli & they are both still very shook up. Their clean up is progressing. The buggies are being repaired. As of yesterday, the porch roof is still off but plans are being made to fix it soon. Eli is working on plans for the new barn too. Nancy & Jim had a crew of helpers at their house on Wednesday cutting up trees. He brought me a load of pine needles & wood chips and put them around the blueberry bushes to help the soil acidity. Have I said it before? I love our neighbors. Lizzie brought us a large amount of homemade butter yesterday right before we left & told me how sorry she was that they didn't check on me right after the storm. I told her that was silly. It was storming until 1 am. No one could go walking around anywhere then.

We were so lucky that my daughter & family were at the farm for Labor Day weekend. Tim helped Steve put up the new pieces of siding.

It was windy on Sunday when they did this. I was glad I wasn't up on the scaffolding with them. It now looks good as new.
Steve & I picked up branches & mowed before we left on Monday. We still have a couple downspouts to fix and a chimney cap to buy along with cutting up a tree that fell in the pasture but we are 100% grateful that that is all we have to do. Eli & Lizzie will be busy for quite some time with repairs around their property. We will do what we can to help them.
I will keep this post short. I am exhausted & need a good night's sleep. Next time I'll post pics of my granddaughter & about what we did besides put up siding while they visited.

Eli's horses pulling the tree from the pasture up the hill.

The path the the twister took. The farm at the top of the hill lost a garage & had a machine shed damaged. Next was Jim & Nancy's , then ours, then Eli's. A farm after Eli's lost a barn & had their orchard destroyed.

Your photos of the path of the tornado is just amazing. You just never know where they are going. I feel so sorry for Lizzy and Eli and all your neighbors for that matter and I"m sorry your having bad dreams once again. Hopefully, time will speed by and you'll be feeling better about that. Look forward to seeing your family photos!!...debbie

i could not stop reading your post! how frightening...i am so sorry you were by yourself, maybe God wanted you to be so you could gain confidence since you did so well! you mentioned some barns down, but what about the animals in the barn? what about eli's cows in the field? were any of them hurt? your barn looks fab! will be thinking about you...haven't blogged consistantly, summer has been busy.

As far as we know, no animals were hurt or injured. Eli & Lizzie have a lot of animals but they said they were accounted for. A poor baby calf was tied up outside during that though but didn't get hurt. The cows & horses were all in the pasture in front of our barn but are ok. I can only imagine them getting blown over though due to the force of the winds.